Union Wants Wal-Mart Files About Payments

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: April 9, 2005

The United Food and Commercial Workers Union called on Wal-Mart Stores yesterday to release all documents connected with accusations that its former vice chairman, Tom Coughlin, had obtained improper expense account reimbursements to finance secret anti-union activities.

The union's call for release of the materials comes two weeks after Mr. Coughlin resigned, accused by Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, of taking $100,000 to $500,000 through expense account abuses.

The company, based in Bentonville, Ark., said it had turned the matter over to the United States attorney for the Western District of Arkansas for criminal investigation.

The union voiced dismay over a report in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that cited several Wal-Mart employees who said that Mr. Coughlin diverted thousands of dollars in expense account reimbursements as part of a plan to make secret payment to union staff members so they would tell Wal-Mart officials the names of pro-union employees at stores.

''We are deeply disturbed by these allegations,'' said Bill McDonough, the union's director of organizing. ''These are serious criminal offenses and cast Wal-Mart's systematic anti-worker activities on a much more sinister level. Wal-Mart should not try and cover up its activities but should do the right thing and make all of the documents public immediately.''

Wal-Mart executives said they knew nothing about such a plan and that the company had not cooperated in any arrangement to funnel money to improper anti-union efforts.

''We reported the unsupported assertion about payments to union representatives to the U.S. attorney when we made our initial report of misappropriated corporate funds,'' said Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for corporate communications. ''Neither Mr. Coughlin nor anyone else at Wal-Mart was ever authorized by the company to make payments to anyone for information about union activity.''

Ms. Williams said a company investigation had found no evidence supporting accusations of money being funneled to illegal anti-union activities. Instead, she said, the money was misappropriated for the personal benefit of specific individuals.

Greg Denier, a union spokesman, said the union did not know of any officials who had accepted payoffs from Mr. Coughlin to inform on pro-union employees. He said he would be shocked if any staffers had accepted such payments.

Federal law prohibits companies or their managers from paying money to union officials to help derail organizing drives. The food and commercial workers have sought to unionize dozens of Wal-Mart stores, but have failed to organize any workers except for those in the meat department of one store in Jacksonville, Tex.

That was five years ago, and a few weeks after the organizing drive succeeded, Wal-Mart, with a reputation for fiercely fighting unions, announced that it was phasing out its meat-cutting operations at its stores in many states and would start using prepackaged meat instead.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Coughlin, long viewed as a prot? of Sam Walton, the company's founder, had faked invoices over more than five years to receive reimbursements for among other things, hunting vacations, a $1,359 pair of custom-made alligator boots and a $2,590 dog pen for his Arkansas home.

In a statement, Mr. Coughlin's lawyers, William W. Taylor III and Blair G. Brown, said: ''Mr. Coughlin did not seek nor obtain any improper reimbursements from Wal-Mart. We are unable to respond further to allegations concerning expense reimbursement without seeing the records. Wal-Mart has refused to provide them to Mr. Coughlin.''

The lawyers said it was unfair for Wal-Mart not to provide Mr. Coughlin, who had once been in the running for chief executive, with the documents after he had worked for the company for 27 years.

William Cromwell, first assistant United States attorney for western Arkansas, declined to comment on the accusations against Mr. Coughlin. The Coughlin resignation is part of a continuing string of embarrassments for Wal-Mart. Last month it reached an $11 million settlement with the federal government over the use of illegal immigrants to clean its stores. In January, it reached a $135,540 settlement with the Labor Department over allegations that it violated child labor laws in three states by letting minors use dangerous equipment.

This week, Wal-Mart held its first conference for journalists in an effort to burnish the company's image. Lawrence Jackson, an executive vice president, said Wal-Mart had repeatedly told its managers and employees to comply with the law.

''We have people who feel pressure, who do the wrong thing, whether it's a vice chairman or whether it's the first person on the floor, and none of it has ever been condoned,'' Mr. Jackson said. ''We make sure that we tell people to do the right thing and not the expedient thing.''

At the conference, Wal-Mart's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., commented about Mr. Coughlin's departure saying, ''It's an extraordinarily difficult issue for the company because of Tom's tenure with the company and the status he held.''